Distillate demand is growing around the world over gasoline as a transportation fuel. The quality requirements for transportation fuel have and continue to become more and more stringent to alleviate environmental pollution concerns. These quality requirements typically require producing a low sulfur fuel with back end control to meet distillation specifications (such as T90 or T95).
In order to maximize yields from the production of such distillate fuels, hydrocracking is required for selectively cracking the heavier hydrocarbons in the hydrocarbon feed. However, subjecting the distillate range hydrocarbons in the hydrocarbon feed to the harsh conditions in the hydrocracking process can results in the undesired hydrocracking of these distillate range hydrocarbons. Thus, such processes may lower the yield by cracking some of the desired products during the hydrocracking step.
Additionally, the yield of such process can be also be limited by the cold flow properties of the distillate range hydrocarbons that are produced. Specifically, if the cold flow properties are unacceptable or outside of limits, the actual yield of acceptable product will be lower.
Therefore, there remains a need for an effective and efficient processes for recovering high quality distillate which meets the product specifications and processes which maximize the yield of same.